37 years later, victim of anti-war bombing honored

MADISON — Thirty-seven years after a car bomb devastated a campus building and shook the nation’s anti-Vietnam war movement, University of Wisconsin leaders dedicated the first memorial Friday to the young scientist killed in the blast.

The 1970 bombing by four student radicals protesting weapons research at Sterling Hall was the most powerful act of domestic terrorism on U.S. soil until the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

But until now, the UW had nothing commemorating Robert Fassnacht, the 33-year-old graduate student and father of three who was working in the building and died in the explosion. [HNN editor: he was anti-war himself.] ...

Historians say the Sterling Hall attack helped bring increasingly violent protests in Madison and across the country to a halt, although the movement to stop the war continued until the last U.S. forces finally left in defeat in 1975....